Croatia Beats Japan on Penalty Kicks and Advances to Quarterfinals

What followed was so routine as to feel somehow administrative: Mario Pasalic, the Croatia midfielder, walked from the halfway line to the penalty area. He picked up the ball. He put it down. He took a couple of steps backward. He clipped a shot past Shuichi Gonda. He ended Japan’s tournament. He did it all with the businesslike air of a man checking a box on some paperwork, making sure everything was in order before it was filed.

As Croatia’s players celebrated in the corner, Japan’s sank to their haunches. A few had tears in their eyes. They had, in one sense, achieved far more at this tournament than they might have expected. The draw for the group phase, after all, had been unusually cruel. Few had given Japan much of a chance of escaping a pool that included two former World Cup winners, even if one of them was an increasingly accident-prone Germany.

That it had done so made Qatar 2022 the country’s most successful men’s tournament before the round of 16 even started; the fullback Yuto Nagatomo had already declared this side the “strongest in Japanese history at the World Cup.” Japan had been competing in World Cup finals for 24 years and had never claimed a scalp quite as grand as that of the Germans. It would, as it turned out, be the biggest result in its history for about 10 days, until Spain.

For all that the Japanese achieved, though, the abiding feeling that will accompany Coach Hajime Moriyasu and his players as they return from Qatar will be regret. Japan has never made a World Cup quarterfinal. And as unkind as its group phase draw had been, the knockout bracket had worked in Japan’s favor. This was its chance. It may not get a better one.

Croatia, certainly, is no Spain. It may not, in fact, be much of a cut above Germany. It is only four years since Luka Modric, Ivan Perisic and the rest made the World Cup final, of course — the smallest nation, by some distance, to do so in the modern age — but its powers have considerably dwindled.

The temptation, of course, is to zoom in on Modric, to point out that time is starting to catch up with one of the finest midfielders of his generation, but that is not the problem. Yes, Modric is 37 now. Yes, his powers have started to show the first, telltale hints of waning. No, he cannot quite complete a full 90 minutes, not four times in two weeks.

But he remains, identifiably and undeniably, Luka Modric. He is still a vision of poise and elegance and has surprising reserves of energy. He can still spend a good hour bursting forward from his post in midfield, just as he did when he was 27, only dropping deeper once he felt that Croatia needed less impulse and more control.

It is the same with Perisic, still a grizzled old warrior, chugging up and down the left wing, and with Marcelo Brozovic, patrolling behind Modric. They all wear their age lightly. They might be slightly faded, but they are hardly worn. The brightest lights of a golden generation do not just stop shining.

No, the issue is what is around them. Four years ago, Modric could rely on the guile of Ivan Rakitic alongside him in midfield and the pugnacious pragmatism of Mario Mandzukic up front. They are absent from the field now, though, along with six more of the side that faced France in the 2018 final in Moscow.

Their replacements — the likes of Bruno Petkovic and Ante Budimir — are not bad players, not at all. Croatia’s resources remain drawn largely from Europe’s elite leagues, and in Josko Gvardiol, the central defender, the country may even have found another generation-defining talent.

But the precise mix, the one that brought so much success for so long, has been diluted, altered in some ineffable way. It is not that time has caught up with Modric — he has said he wishes to play until he is 40, and it is hard to build a convincing case against that idea — but that he has outlasted much of the rest of his generation.

For a while, it seemed as if Japan would take advantage. It more than merited its lead at halftime, secured thanks to a goal from Daizen Maeda. Every time the Japanese attacked at pace, every time they flickered with even the slightest purpose, Croatia seemed to rock back on its heels.

It was saved, if anything, by first a muscle memory — a long, hopeful ball from one old-timer, Dejan Lovren, met with a thunderous header by another, Perisic — and then a trait which distills, rather than evaporates, with time: sheer, bloody-minded grit.

Slowly, surely, Croatia squeezed all of the fun out of Japan. Unlike Spain, unlike Germany, it was not prepared to tolerate any chaos. This was business, not pleasure. There was no time for drama, no space for twists. There was nothing, in fact, but a box to be checked and some paperwork to be filed.

Corrections were made on : 

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of international goals from the Japanese forward Daizen Maeda. His goal against Croatia was his second, not his first.

An earlier version of this article misstated how many Asian teams have made it to the quarterfinals of the World Cup. South Korea was the second team to do so in 2002, not the first. (North Korea did it in 1966.)

How we handle corrections

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/12/05/sports/japan-croatia-world-cup-score